Injury Update

I had my MRI on Wednesday and the nurse called me with the results on Thursday. Good news first: no stress fracture! Hooray! The bad news: I’m not allowed to start running yet.

The MRI showed a benign bone lesion and some swelling in my foot/ankle. The swelling is not noticeable to me, but I am still trying to take of it with regular icing. The nurse described the bone lesion as being damage to the bone, but not a stress fracture. It was recommended that I take another 10-14 days off from running and then start to slowly ease back into training. Since the bone is damaged, if I push it too much before it fully heals, I risk fracturing it.

I am doing my best to be patient, but I am really anxious to start running again. Right now I have been cleared to start walking as much as I want provided there is no pain. I tested my foot out with a nice walk that day and discovered that I was good for about a mile before getting just a tiny bit of pain.

To be honest, realizing I could only manage to walk a mile made me want to cry. How could I resume training in a couple weeks if I couldn’t even walk? Mr. Shoe quickly reminded me that in a week I had went from being able to walk about 5 feet without pain to being able to walk a mile, which is a huge improvement! I was able to walk 1.5 miles today without any pain.

While I am healing I am trying to focus on taking care of myself as much as possible. I revamped my diet to include more whole foods and fewer processed foods. At my doctor’s recommendation I have upped my calcium intake. She thought that my low calcium intake (I’m lactose intolerant) might be behind my injury. I have been adding in more strength training for my core and upper body (an area I tend to ignore in favor of more running). I have also been doing these IT band exercises, since I have had IT band pain in the past. Hopefully this will get me through this injury and back into running feeling strong.

Mr. Shoe and I (and some friends) are signed up for a 5k race on June 14th. This will be exactly 10 days after my MRI, so I will technically be allowed to start running again. I am still unsure if I will attempt to run it (at a very easy pace) or if I will be walking. I need to see how this next week goes before I make any decisions.